An increasing number of men and women are choosing platinum as the material to construct their jewelry. This increase is especially true with respect to engagement rings and wedding bands when compared to only a few years ago. The increased sales of platinum jewelry items has created the need for jewelers to work more often with platinum as these items are manufactured, altered, and/or repaired to meet the specific needs of the purchasers.
Platinum, however, possesses characteristics which make these tasks more challenging to jewelers who generally perform similar tasks on items made from either gold or silver. One such characteristic is that platinum glows a blindingly bright color while being welded. This blinding effect is exacerbated when a jeweler uses image magnification to perform intricate detail work required by many jewelry items.
Jewelers have been forced by these vision problems to wear welding glasses or goggles in order to work on platinum. Presently available glasses and goggles, however, have significant drawbacks. First, these glasses and goggles must be put on before the jeweler is ready. This fact causes the initial work to be performed through the dark lens before these lens are needed. If the jeweler begins the welding process without the glasses or goggles in place, he or she must typically put the torch and/or poker used in the welding process down, and thus stop the process, in order to adjust the glasses. Additionally, these glasses and goggles are not generally well integrated with the image magnifying visors typically worn by jewelers in order to work on intricate items. This lack of integration aggravates the problems associated with donning the darkened glasses as the glasses need to be worn along with the magnifying visor. Of course, the magnification of the work area increases the visual effect of the glowing platinum which contributes to the need for the darker lens.